"I give you your choice; either you break with Rosalie, or, dreadful as it is to me to think of it, you break with me.
If you do not by to-morrow evening give me an assurance that this intrigue is at an end, I go to Rosalie's mother." "Good-night, thou stupid Tony!" said Fink.
The following day was a gray one for both.
It was Fink's constant custom, on entering the office, to beckon to his friend, whereupon Anton would leave his place, and exchange a few words as to how Fink had spent the previous evening.

But this morning Anton doggedly remained where he was, and bent down over his letters when Fink took his seat opposite him.

Whenever they looked up, they had to make as though empty space were before them, and not each other's faces.

Fink had found it easy to treat the paternal Ehrenthal as a nonentity, but it was not so in this case; and Anton, who had had no practice in the art of overlooking others, felt himself supremely uncomfortable.

Then every thing conspired to make it peculiarly difficult to each to play his part.